Glaze is the fired on coating applied to the ceramic piece to make it waterproof. Glazes can be opaque, clear, speckled, translucent, colored or any mixture of the above. There are literally thousands of glazes and techniques, but glaze can be a important feature in telling vintage ceramics from modern fakes.
| Plain white jars, or are they? Vintage pottery, especially from Ohio, was often created with slip that fired into a cream colored ceramic. McCoy, Shawnee, Robinson Ransbottom and Hull all used this type of slip. For a "white" jar, such as the McCoy Mammy cookie jar, instead of using paint, the companies often used a semi-translucent white glaze that is VERY obvious if you know what to look for. In the picture below you can see the bottom of a vintage McCoy Mammy. Notice the white glaze. Also notice the dry ring around the "foot" of the jar. Vintage pottery was often created using wax resist technique, which left a very distinct type of irregular dry ring around the base. This jar is typical of the technique. The modern fakes are created using bright white slip (the industry standard today) and cast a perfectly white piece. Since there is no need to "brighten" the piece, only clear glaze is applied, and the end effect is quite different when examined closely.
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